With so many free SEO tools available, it can be difficult to understand which ones will work best for your business. In order to have the best chance of ranking well in the SERP’s (search engine results pages), it is important to understand the products that can help give valuable insights into the traffic visiting your website. There are some really useful free SEO tools, which means you can start using them right away. Here are a few that are worth taking a look at:
Google Analytics
Every website should have Google Analytics installed so that traffic can be regularly monitored and analysed. It is a great tool that gives deep insights into the audience visiting your website, how they are arriving at the website and how they are interacting with the website. Google analytics also offers insights into the keywords that are working well to generate organic traffic and also helps identify the user journeys and where users have clicked on the site.
Google Webmaster Tools
This is a tool that everyone should be using for their website. At first glance it may seem a little intimidating, but you don’t actually need to be an expert to start using it. Google webmaster tools provide you with constant website analysis, alerts and also error reports. It gives you insight into what Google sees when it looks at your site and makes you aware of anything that might be affecting its rankings or the site in general.
Übersuggest
This is a great tool for quickly finding long keyword phrases you can use on your website. Unlike the Google Keyword Planner, you don’t have to login to access this tool. It is a quick and easy platform to help give you some inspiration and ideas. The only downside of Übersuggest is that it doesn’t offer any insight into the type or level of competition on each keyword/phrase.
SEO Site Check-Up
SEO site check up is a tool that will allow you to look at the current SEO status of your website. You simply enter the URL to generate a fast audit of your site which picks up any areas you can improve. Focusing on general SEO, speed, security and mobile usability, SEO Site Check-Up will give a quick overview of your website and advice on how it could be improved.
Browseo
A great tool for looking at how search engine ‘spiders’ view your site in order to rank it. Simply enter your URL and Browseo reveals a version of the website that will allow you to see the hierarchy’s and how they are structured throughout your site.
Similar Web
If you are looking to complete competitor research, then Similar Web is a great tool to use. Enter the website you want to look at and Similar Web will display the rankings and traffic. Simple to use, this tool is good for comparing the traffic between two websites. Results include visits by location and source, while also giving information on referrals.
Hootsuite
Hootsuite is a user friendly platform that helps you keep on top of your social media channels. Load up your dashboard for twitter, Google +, LinkedIn and schedule when you want your content to be posted. You can set the time and date of each post, so you don’t have to worry about constantly updating your social channels every day. It also gives you the ability to create reports so you are able to see which posts have been most popular.
Copyscape
This tool acts as a plagiarism checker, checking content that has been duplicated elsewhere on the web. You simply enter in the URL for the page you want to check and Copyscape with check it against other sites for similar content.
Passle
Passle is a great tool that can be used to create content. It is a digital marketing platform that allows users to take sections of content from websites and post them, along with their own comments, on blogs or social media platforms. You simply highlight the content you want to use and add it to passle, while also adding your own thoughts on the content. You can then add tweets related to the article which makes the whole process a simple way of creating relevant, timely content.
Using these tools will mean that you don’t need to be an expert to achieve good results with your SEO. Using them regularly will give you an insight into your site’s performance and areas that can easily be improved.